30 July 2013

Modernism is a story men
tell themselves.Told often enough, the
story takes on the status of history.

The standard narrative
of the new art in early 20th century Vienna is especially egregious in ignoring the women who participatedconsidering how many of them there were.The invisibility of patrons like Sonja Knips or
Lili Waerndorfer is easier to understand than that of artists who, after all,
leave works behind with their names on them.Which brings me, for the second
time in these columns, to Broncia Koller-Pinell (1863-1934) .

Sometimes referred to
only by her married name ofKoller, she
was an established artist of thirty-three when she married.Koller worked in all the major genres of
Modernist art: portraits, nudes, landscapes, interiors, and still life.Schooled at the Academy of Art in Munich, a
city with its own Secession group, she studied woodblock printing in Vienna
with the accomplished Adolf Bohm around 1900.Like her teacher, Koller adapted the recently discovered Japanese medium
of the ukiyo-e print to local imagery.

Instead ofpure japonisme or
stock symbols of Art Nouveau (think: swans, lotus blossoms, etc.), Koller created
strong images of Austrian landscape and working women, even the extremely
specificRoof Of The Vienna Theater From A House At Weinseile Number 6.Koller’s work moves away from the Jugendstil
toward the even newer spare modernism.

Although women were not
official members of the first Vienna Secession, many women did exhibit with the
group and Koller was first among them.For the Secessionists, the interior was a psychological space, permeable
by the public life, and gender was not a negative attribute of the interior.The term decorative also alluded to the use
of the picture plane, a tending toward abstraction.Their statement in the 1908 Kunstschau catalog
read : “To permeate life with art is something altogether different from
hanging it with art products.”

At the 1908 Kunstschau,
a celebration of Emperor Franz Josef’s 60th jubilee, Koller had a
great success,In one gallery was a
group of her paintings and in
anothera wall was devoted to her
woodblock prints.It was there that Egon
Schiele first saw Koller’s portrait of her mother, the model for his portrait
of Hans Massmann.

Koller exhibited frequently, at the Kunstschau
in 1908 and again in 1909. and elsewhere.In1911 Koller had a joint exhibition with Heinrich
Schroder at Carl Moll’s Galerie Miethke. In 1919,Koller participated in the debut exhibition
of the Aquarius group in Salzburg.She also made the all-important hanging decisions for the Sonderbund at Galerie Miethke. It is interesting to compare Koller's Arco with Moll's House Of Therese Krones in Dobling- Vienna (c.1912-14, de Grosz Collection, Vienna). Painted at about the same time, how the similar elevated street views, how different the results between Koller's exuberant brushwork and fauvist style palette from Moll's delicate colors and restrained realism, and each impressive in its own way. Beware over-generalizations in art; it is a mirage created by our desire for a neat story.

Koller kept an apartment
in Vienna and a studio at Naschmarkt. Among her close friends were Lou-Andreas Salome, whose portrait Koller painted, and Alma Mahler.
Broncia’s brother Friedrich became Salome’s
lover. and the foursome was often together. The wealthy Pinell family maintained a country home at Oberwaltersdorf that Broncia inherited, and where she painted
Harvest, one of her most popular works. When the Emperor
purchasedHarvest for the Belvedere,
friends reported to Koller on the excitement that greeted its public debut
there.

Alma Mahlerwho often visited
the Kollers’s summer home inOberwaltersdorf with her daughter Anna .Koller’s son Rupert and Anna married, briefly in 1921, but when Anna left Rupert Koller the
friendship disintegrated, not helped at all by a plat Bocksgesang
(Goat's Song), written by Alma's new
partner Franz Werfel, a poorly-disguised chronicle of the unhappy marriage in five acts.
Other frequent summer guests were Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and Egon
Schiele.

Broncia Koller was
a friend and mentor, to the younger painter Schiele.In 1918 Koller painted a double portrait of
Schiele and his wife Edith. This was also
the year of the influenza epidemic that took both Schieles, within days of each
other.Edith Schiele was already so ill that she had
been unable to attend the funeral of their friend, Koloman Moser, who had died
at age forty-nine from throat cancer.

Months before he died, Schiele made a watercolor drawing of Koller's daughter Silvia. As an adult, Silvia Koller (1898-1963) became a successful painter.

Koller-Pinell was Jewish; her husband Hugo Koller was not. For her, the increasing anti-Semitism in the Kunstschau after 1932
beganthe erasure of her artistic
reputation. In the decades after
Koller’s death, the importance of her work was minimized even by men who had
praised and supported her in life. It takes repeated acts of rediscovery to keep art alive and available.

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Why The Blue Lantern ?

A blue-shaded lamp served as the starboard light for writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's imaginary journeys after she became too frail to leave her bedroom at the Palais Royale. Her invitation, extended to all, was "Regarde!" Look, see, wonder, accept, live.

"I think of myself as being in a line of work that goes back about twenty-five thousand years. My job has been finding the cave and holding the torch. Somebody has to be around to hold the flaming branch, and make sure there are enough pigments." - Calvin Tompkins